Why?
April 10th, 2008 by Karen
I find it a terribly cruel and cold twist of fate that a wonderful young man I know is suffering from Hodgkins. He’s faced it head on and battled hard, taking a long series of chemotheraphy treatments. His test results just came back and there’s been little change so he’s moving on to radiation therapy. Why? Why? Why? I don’t understand. He’s a good man, faithful to God, caring to his young wife and friends. There’s no reason under the sun that I can see that he should have to suffer the trials of Job to prove the depths of his faith. My heart breaks for him…
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My Chaucer
April 4th, 2008 by Karen
When I originally had to learn the Old English pronunciation of the first 42 lines of Geoffery Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales in Kathy Kernberger’s Honors English class at college, I wasn’t really sure when or if I would ever find it useful again. You’d be surprised at how many times this seems to come up in my life.
When one of my friends on The Cape Radio hosted the Poetry Slam last week, it only seemed fitting to record it and send it in as my offering.
(Siderant… the general media enjoys portraying gamers as uncouth, slovenly idiots not fit for public appearance. In my three years of playing City of Heroes / City of Villains, I have found quite the contrary. The folks I play with are incredibly educated, successful, well read, well traveled, artsy people who often simply feel isolated from the lack of reasonably equal companionship locally. The amount of real-life related information that is shared in private conversations in game is massive. We support each other’s business endeavors in impromptu brainstorming sessions and resource referrals. We let others know of job opportunities in their areas of expertise. We comfort each other’s sorrows and rejoice in each other’s joys. We are not pasty, sun-deprived, pimply 14 year old boys living on Doritos and Mountain Dew, tyvm. )
As I noted below, I was really worried about how well it would be received and I was ecstatic at the response. Take a listen for yourself and tell me what you think:
Excerpt from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffery Chaucer
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Thin Mints are evil
April 2nd, 2008 by Karen
Ok, this is a bit of a rant, but you know those Girl Scout cookies? They’re all fine and good…EXCEPT THIN MINTS! Oh sure, they seem innocent enough, but you open the box and find so very many of them. All the other types of cookies that Girl Scouts sell come in much smaller quantities. Samoas? Only 12. Peanut Butter Patties? 20. But Thin Mints…a box of Thin Mints has 32 cookies.
Thirty-two blissful, chestnut colored disks of crispy mint perfection.
Can you eat just one? I can’t. But I can eat the whole stupid box. Evil I tell you. Evil!
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Learning courage
April 1st, 2008 by Karen
Ok, I’ll admit it. I am not someone who enjoys public speaking overmuch. In fact, it basically freaks me out. When I was a kid, I used to get woozy and pass out just getting in front of my class doing a bookreport. The funny thing is, I’ve always enjoyed performing arts and have been involved in band, choirs, and doing plays and musicals since second grade. Something about doing it -alone- I find immensely terrifying.
Unfortunately, this irrational fear is personally crippling and I’ve made a committment to myself to move past it as quickly as possible. To that end, I’ve been participating in a few interactive events on my favorite player run radio station in City of Heroes, The Cape Radio. I submitted a poem for the Poetry slam that was on Monday evening and tonight was the City of Karaoke 3 and I submitted a song for that as well. It was stressful waiting to hear what people thought about my pieces, but I was really pleasantly surprised.
Hopefully soon, I’ll have the courage to start posting video regularly.
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Bowling for Birthdays
March 29th, 2008 by Karen
Today was Maria’s 8th birthday party and we had a complete blast. We normally have birthday parties at home, but since last year’s birthday was a bit…horrible…we relented and had her party at the local bowling alley. We wanted to make this one memorable as she’s nearly totally recovered from her shattered elbow. Praise God!
We ended up with ten bowlers from the kids in her class and a whole bunch of family. I made the cake of course and we had a vanilla cake bowling bag and a chocolate cake bowling ball, both covered in colored fondant. The kids also had pizza and soda and I think a great time was had by all.
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There and back again…
March 27th, 2008 by Karen
This past week, I actually went road-tripping with my Mom and I had an absolute blast. We went to Eastern Oregon to visit my grandmother so I could fix her computer and we could catch up a bit. It took a few days to get the computer square with the world, simply because they live in the middle of nowhere (dial-up and no wifi spots available…arg) and downloading updates for a few of her programs was a several hour process. After installing a significant memory upgrade, updating her programs, and making a few accessibility adjustments, it was good to go. While we waited for things to download, we had a fantastic time, just being with my Grandma.
My Grandpa Bill passed away in December of 2006, and every time we’ve been there since, I’ve had kids in tow and there have been a myriad of other things I had to focus on. This time, we actually got to VISIT. Grandma took us all over town, showing us off to her friends and was infinitely proud that her granddaughter was fixing her computer. We went to several luncheons and potlucks and out to coffee with her friends everymorning. I made two lemon merengue pies (they were always my Grandpa’s favorite) and even made her some Easter eggs since I knew we would be headed home the day before. It was awesome talking with my Grandma about all sorts of stuff that I never knew, simply because there wasn’t time before and we were always interupted. I also spent a fair amount of time scanning family photographs although I didn’t make much of a dent since Grandma is a photographer and former newspaper editor and there are boxes of photos in every nook and cranny.
Mom and I stayed up late every night just talking about life, family, work, her teaching, affiliate programming, my new business, just about everything under the sun. It was really a great trip and I can’t wait to do it again!!
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New Facebook privacy controls
March 18th, 2008 by Karen
Facebook announced today that Wednesday morning ( March 18 ), they will be rolling out new privacy controls. Essentially, this will allow Facebook users to create “walls” between their business and personal lives. It will utilize the “friends lists” feature that they launched in December. While I’m uncertain that I will really be using this as I consider a fair amount of my business associates to be friends and try to live my life so I have little I would be embarassed to have as public knowledge, I know there are a lot of folks out there that would prefer to keep things hidden from the spotlight social networking can create.
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St. Patricks Day Reflection
March 17th, 2008 by Karen
Thirty one years ago today, I was baptized. I was all of 14 days old, so I don’t remember it, but I know it was March 17th because of my Aunt Marge.
Aunt Marge was perpetually old…she seemed ancient to my girlish eyes when I was little and was always a constant in my life. Every year, without exception, she sent me a card on my baptismal birthday. It was every bit as important as my regular birthday to her and I came to find its importance as well as comfort and wisdom in her brusque manners. As the world spun faster and faster, she shared small bits of advice in her slow manner with me while I was growing up. I distinctly remember sitting at my parent’s dining room table with a tiny notebook she always carried while she taught me how to spell so many of the words my dyslexia caused me to stumble over. We sat there for hours as she dictated words to me and I must have wrote the word “cinnamon” fifty times, but I did it. She was extremely proper, and I don’t know how many thousands of times she told me not to slouch and how to do things ‘just so’, but despite her demeanor she meant well and did it with love.
I never really knew too much about the person that was Margaret Plancich and this I will forever regret. I do know that she worked for many, many years for Kelly-Clarke and she had many important business people as friends, although she never mentioned them. She never married although a cousin told me she once had a sweetheart who was killed and so she never married. Romantic…yes. Truthful? I have no idea. Regardless, it simply added to her mystique.
Three years ago, my baptismal birthday cards stopped. My Aunt Marge had passed away the previous Decemember at 96. As the day got closer, I grew sad knowing that nothing important would be in the mail. When St. Patrick’s Day finally arrived, I was surprised by a card from my parents…and I sat on the front steps of our house and cried.
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Happy Birthday Tony Constantine
March 13th, 2008 by Karen
Happy 31st birthday my old friend, wherever you may be. I still have your fruitcake…
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Military Coupon Clipping
March 11th, 2008 by Karen
I just came across a really wonderful article about Seniors helping overseas military families by clipping coupons. What a phenominal idea! I’ve known for a few years that military families were able to use expired coupons overseas, but never knew there was an organized effort. Also, I was never really certain where to send them.
Here’s the low down: military families overseas can use expired coupons at their base PX and Commissary for up to SIX MONTHS past the expiration date. This helps the families of our brave servicemen and women make ends meet. There’s even a non-profit organization called the Overseas Coupon Program that encourages you to “adopt” a military base to send your expired coupons. If you figure that the average Sunday newspaper contains $125 worth of coupons, even if you take out $25 for your own family use, that adds up to $5,200 of unused coupons every year! That’s just from the Sunday paper too, not the rest of the week or the ones that come in the mail.
Here’s the steps to get involved:
- Clip the coupons - send only manufacturer coupons that are expired by 2 months or less and clipping them will save on postage.
- Sort the coupons - sort into two piles; one for food coupons that can be used at the commissary and one for everything else for the PX. Food coupons should only be for “people” food. Pet food coupons belong in the PX pile. Place each pile in Ziploc baggies as other bundling methods aren’t reliable.
- Total the coupons - if you want to participate in OCP’s tallys, add up the value of your coupons and email the amount to OCP. This helps them determine which bases may need additional assistance and they keep a running total of the coupon value people have contributed.
- Mail the coupons - follow the simple directions available on the OCP website for mailing the coupons to a base in need. Be sure to follow all the directions to ensure they get received at the base you select.
That’s it! Pretty simple! While our family no longer receives the paper, we do have family members that do and we also get coupons every week in the insert in the regular mail. I’ve always hated tossing good coupons for products we don’t personally need or use, but now I know where to send them!
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